Health officials sealed off an Indian town hit by bird flu for a week-long ”quarantine” on Thursday as immediate fears began easing that the deadly virus may have spread to humans.
Checkpoints were set up on all roads in and out of the town of Navapur and trains passed through its station without stopping as officials urged only those who needed to make essential trips to travel.
”The whole area will be quarantined for roughly one week,” state government spokesperson Bhushan Gagrani said.
”The government is discouraging people [from travel]. Those with a pressing need are allowed, providing they are checked up properly,” said Gagrani. He said routes to the town are ”totally regulated”.
Twelve people, who originally had mild fever, remained under observation while medics were on alert for symptoms among the 60 000 residents of the town and villages within 10km, Gagrani said.
In total, 202 samples from 174 people have been sent for testing, he said.
But a senior health official stressed that no human cases of bird flu have been confirmed in the country. And the 12 people under observation have not shown signs of the disease, official Deepak Gupta in New Delhi told reporters.
Another official, NK Ganguly, announced that all but one of the first batch of 95 samples collected from residents of the Navapur area have tested negative for avian influenza.
Tests on the single remaining sample are under way at the National Institute of Virology in western Pune city, with the results available on Saturday, he said.
Meanwhile, officials in Navapur said they are stopping poultry workers from leaving town until they have been tested for bird flu.
Bus passengers are checked for signs of illness before they are allowed to cross checkpoints. They also discourage people from attending weddings and other public events.
”Their movements have been restricted but not banned,” said Dr P Doke, director of health for the state, adding that the checkpoints are being set up 7km from the heart of the outbreak.
”We are discouraging people from gathering and people shouldn’t invite guests into this area,” he said.
Schools remain open but teachers are drawing pictures of chickens on blackboards and telling children to stay away from birds, said an Agence France-Presse photographer in Navapur. He said a number of students left town late on Wednesday.
Officials are ”watching” villages to try to prevent workers from leaving before they have been tested for infection.
”We will not allow them to go unless they have been checked by a doctor,” said Uttam Khobragade, secretary of animal husbandry for western Maharashtra state.
Buses are halting outside the town with temporary stops marking the end of their journeys outside the poultry-producing centre where tens of thousands of chickens have died since January 24.
The streets are busy and the markets operating normally, although only fish is available, while shoppers admit to feeling nervous. Chicken and mutton are nowhere to be bought, with traders saying residents of the afflicted town have become vegetarian en masse.
A slaughter of chickens that began on Sunday at commercial farms within a 10km radius of Navapur was completed on Wednesday, officials said.
Teams of workers had slaughtered 272 035 birds at farms in and around the town and were starting to disinfect the area, while 73 157 chickens were killed in neighbouring Gujarat state.
The clean-up phase of containment operations involves the removal of large quantities of bird droppings by hand and the burning of feathers. It is expected to take up to 10 days, according to one official. — AFP
